Saturday, January 29, 2011

Well I return this week to dungeon building :) After being held on a commission paint job last week (Chan Li, Martial arts Master), and recently purchased TerrainlinX Model Planner from WorldWorks Games, I got addicted to designing and playing around with all the features. Quite fun indeed. So last night at work (I work the graveyard shift) I designed a dungeon rough sketch and put into the planner today. I figured this will take a while, working a bit on it each day between painting as well. I will keep updates here under this title (Dungeon X).

Although I have yet to think of a proper name, or way to use it, I thought it would be fun to design a dungeon again. There will be a total of 5 floors within. Party will start on the second floor and work their way towards the 4th, the 1st floor will compose of a ruined floor and a large room where something awaits them most evil, as the bottom floor is 2x as high as the others.

Here is a rough sketch I did at work. Sloppy, I know, but it gives me a rough idea of overall layout.

Well in the past week after working on the fabulous terrain dungeon from WorldWorks Games, I received my first cash paying commission for painting. This is actually the first time in using the web to show images of my paintings, and a first of doing Work In Progress (WIP) pics.

I have been painting for many years now and have mostly painted my own figures and then into groups, armies, and so on. For the past 2-3 years I have done work for close friends only and have received payment mostly them buying me more units or figures.

As this blog is supposed to be into ALL my projects, I felt it is time to share with whomever wishes to view them. Comments and criticisms are welcome to be posted, just keep it civil.

Sunday, January 23, 2011

Well here we have it! I completed a little bit of a build. I am happy with this product it provides a fantastic build and great modular option to build a dungeon. This is fantastic! Now, without further ado, I present my pics of the building of a section of a dungeon, and at the end some action shots!!

Here we have everything we need to get started. Floor tiles with anchors attached, short walls, long walls (both in regular and anti-warp), archways, T-linX, and extra tall archways. Lets get started!!

So sturdy together, as shown by me holding up in the air! I even dropped it before this pic. Holding nicely together. Now for the build of walls and such.

Walls, posts, and anchors all assembled ontop of the floors. Looks good huh? I noticed with this tho I have to rearrange the way posts are put on, hence the gap in floors.

Top shot of area built.

Now added figures for relations to size.

Another dungeon shot with figures. Figures are blurry because my iPhone doesnt like small sizes.

The action is getting serious for these 3 adventurers.

For those wondering this is the terrain set Lost Halls of the Dwarven Kings from WorldWorks Games. This was built using the 1" grid format they provide, as well as a 1.5" grid, and a gridless format for the floors. I enjoyed building this so much that I went out and also got the 2 "Boosters" for this set Treasures and Tombs and Vault of the Ancients, and not to mention the TerrainlinX Model Planner. I am addicted and enjoying building these. I will definatly be getting more, but first I have to get to painting a new commission job I got - pics will follow.

After what seems to be a long week, of it was believe me, I was able to slowly work on the anchors. These tabs get cut out, glued together for extra support, and then glued onto the floor tiles in the marked spots. The anchors are by far the worst part of the building process, as they are tiny and many cuts are needed by hand to break them free of the white card, and then edged. The biggest problem is that there are many, many of these (I did almost 200) and they must be lined up correctly to assemble on the floors, but thats a different post.

Most of these I did while watching a movie, which helps move the time along and delay the agony within my pressing finger of cutting out 200 anchors and then cutting away the white bits leftover. Dont get me wrong, its well worth it as it looks fabulous and the pain is well worth this beauty. Just remember to take a break every now and then as I have and you will be fine.

anchors cut free from the paper and ready for gluing. There are the corner anchors (small ones) and middle anchors (large ones).

All 200 anchors glued, scored, edged and ready for placement.

See the floors? the white spots are where the anchors get glued into place.

First floor tile is complete! See how the anchors blend into the floor tile? Isnt that cool! you can barly see them, except the ones I bent up to show - the top three are so hidden you didnt even notice them.

Now back to the other floor tiles. I will update when I have completed them and possibly a look at completed area to knock your socks off!!

Monday, January 17, 2011

Continuing work on this beautiful terrain set Lost Halls of the Dwarven Kings from WorldWorks Games.
As I am in the final stages, still continuing from where I left off I ran into a few snags. First of all the label paper I printed the texture tiles on (the floors) made for easy mounting onto the template of foamcore. Now not all easy is good as I ran into a snag here or there. The side when the linX fit into began to stick to the link and tough to get out easy. To improve on this I had to add another step in that I would leave on enough of the label backing to cover the slot. This fits much better, but does take and extra step into construction.

See how they stack? Oh and all floor labels have been cut out, ready to be adhesived.

Just a few of the floors done. They are beautiful and I cannot wait to put this all together!

The floor bits I have completed so far make me giddy and excited for completion, now just to finish the rest of the floors, attach the anchors, and drool over it some more. Back to finishing up and more pics to follow!

Saturday, January 15, 2011

As I take a short break from cutting out the templates, sticking them on foamcore, then cutting those out - I decided to give my hands a break for a bit. Cutting everything by hand is quite tasking and can take a toll on your hands, specially the finger that guides the blade.

During this break I decided to re-cap on some things I have learned constructing this set of terrain from WorldWorks Games.

1. Always make sure you have enough of the same type of paper ready for your project. The paper type and brand must be same same for the project because each company has different quality of paper. For example some tiles I printed on Avery paper turned out different than the ones printed on Staples brand paper.

2. Along with paper, make sure you have plenty of ink to make it thru printing off your pieces. This didnt happen to me, but well worth mentioning.

3. Edge BEFORE construction. This saves time from mistakes that may happen. No matter how good you are, you probablly will mess up if you wait to edge.

4. Take a break. Every now and then you will have to step away from a project and strech your legs and your fingers to keep from cramping up later on.

5. Planning goes a LONG way. If you can plan your set up before printing everything out. This will save you time in the end as you will have everything you need in front of you and no need to go back to the printer for more. WorldWorks Games makes a great Terrain Planner for the TLX system and can be found here. The planner lets you design what you want to build and tells you what sets you will need to purchase to achieve your vision. It also tells you how many of what parts you will need to completely construct your build.

Heres some pics from my templates for the floor tiles and what Im working with at the moment::
templates printed out and ready to be attached to foamcore. Templates are printed on 8 1/2"x11" label paper for easier quicker construction.

Templates attached to foamcore. 1 1/2 sheets ready to be cut out.

Templates cut out and halfway done.

Back to it for now, and later I will be able to attach the floor tiles - but I will be back with those pics and update.

Friday, January 14, 2011

Continued work on this fabulous papercraft terrain set from WorldWorks Games.
This time around I completed a few of the posts variety. Posts sit ontop of anchor points on the floors and are what hold your walls in place. Also this time I decided to edge the posts before completion.
Edging is when you go over the edges of white paper with a marker (preferably black) to hide that it is indeed paper - that and it adds a nice looking shadow.

Post before edging and construction.

Post being edged. Black marker along the white parts.

See the difference. The right post is edged where as the left on is plain constructed and will have to be edged soon without ruining the art of the post. Look at all those other ones needing done.

Posts completed. Various sizes and shapes.

Posts are now completed and next stop is the Floors!
Although now I realize this is complete backwards order in the way you should build this, but I will cover that in next section as well. For now - may your glue hold strong and your brush paint true!

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Continued more work today on this awesome terrain set from WorldWorks Games.
As I discussed yesterday, I worked on the basic walls and today began constructing the very cool Anti Warp Walls - they also come in 3" and 6". So for the 3 hrs I got to work on today, I was able to get 15 of the 3" and 6 of the 6" anti-warp walls done.

Anti-warp walls scored, tested and ready to be assembled.

One down, more to go

There we are. All done for the ones I printed out - about 1 copy of each page of walls.

even got a few archways done

As an added bonus I also printed out a copy of the double high wall with archways. This is the 6" long double high wall. Done basically for 2-story builds. and I plan on doing that here.

Not bad for todays work. Next I plan on doing posts in preparation for the floors...wait till you see those!